EXAAAAAMS!
by Lady Alyss
Summary: aaaaah! everybody panic! it's exams season here in the UK! oneshot of how Valkyrie deals with it. heh heh...


This is for eveyone out there currently doing exams! if only we all had a Skulduggery to teach us, everyone would pass with A*! aaaah, if he was my tutor, i doubt i would get much work done though... please, enjoy.

and i'm typing up another chapter of "Although Bereft of You" tonight, so get ready, i'm closing in on his circle of friends.

* * *

**Exams**

Skulduggery was driving round Haggard, bored. There was nothing going on and he had nothing to do. The scream that broke the sleepy heat of summer would've been a perfect distraction for him save for one thing; it was Valkrie's scream. He span the Bentley round and raced to her house, hoping she was okay. He sprang out the car like a demented praying mantis and lept up to her window and burst into her room, conjuring a fireball as he sprang, ready to ground whose ever face needed to be ground into the ground.

He could only be described as surprised by what he saw. He'd seen monsters, he'd seen evil, he'd seen death and destruction in his long life, but he had never seen anything quite like this.

Valkyrie was banging her head repeatedly onto her desk, yelling.

"Valkyrie...?" he said tentatively.

"It won't go in!" she moaned

"Sorry?"

"THIS!" she gestured to the piles and piles of books scattered around her room. Papers were pinned to the walls; pictures of mountains, equations, plot summaries and millions of other things. Exercise books were folded open on long paragraphs of boring text.

"Oh." He looked around the room, staring at what could have once been the Amazon Rainforest. "What is this?" he finally asked.

"Exams," she said, her face on the desk. She said it like it was a disease. "Everything I've learnt this year, except _I_ didn't learn it!" She was beginning to yell again. "It was that BLOODY REFLECTION!" She began banging her head on the desk again.

" Valkyrie, please stop banging your head on the desk, it won't help. It borders on being counter productive." She stopped, but her face was still pressed against the desk.

"I'm going to fail," she moaned.

"Why don't you let the reflection do it?" he offered.

"Because I want to pass them, not the reflection. But it's too hard! What is this?!" she shrieked, pulling a random textbook off the floor. She pointed to a diagram. "What is this?!" she shrieked again.

"It appears to be a diagram of the nitrogen cycle," Skulduggery said, peering at the textbook.

"Well bully for you, at least _someone_ knows it," she yelled and chucked the book into the wall.

"Valkyrie, please calm down, I can help," he said, taking both her wrists before she began throwing more books.

"Really?" she looked up, a glimmer of hope crossing her eyes.

"Valkyrie, please. I've fought armies of the undead, I've killed monster and Gods. I'm sure I can help you with your schoolwork."

"Thank you," she said. "Will you let go of me now?" he let her wrists and she slid into her chair. She took a deep breath, then said, "So where shall we start?"

"Lets just tidy your room first, okay?"

"Okay." Tidying her room took the best part of three hours, half of which was spent incapacitating Valkyrie as she was prone to freaking out every time she saw something she didn't know. Which was most of her work. Finally, the momentous task was finished. They stared at the clean room.

"I can see my bed," Valkyrie whispered. "I haven't seen it for days. I thought it had vanished."

"Where did you sleep?" Skulduggery asked

"Remember the pile of sheets that had my history notes in them?"

"Yes."

"I made a nest out of them."

"So that's why they were all crumpled," Skulduggery mused. "But didn't your parents notice?"

"No, they've gone away for the week, so I could have the house to myself for revision. With hindsight, that may not have been the best decision."

"No, it probably wasn't. So," he clapped his hands, "where do we start?"

"Lunch," said Valkyrie and she slide down the banister to the kitchen, "I'm starving," she called up the stairs. "I couldn't leave my room because the papers wedged the door shut, so I was eating bits of paper." Skulduggery sighed and went downstairs and entered the kitchen. Valkyrie was frying eggs. "I promise we'll start after dinner, okay?"

"Fine." He sat down and watched her eat. He found it fascinating to watch her eat. He hadn't eaten for so long and could spend years and ye-

"Skulduggery, stop staring at me whilst I eat. Its kinda creepy," Valkyrie said, breaking his train of thought.

"Sorry."

After lunch, they headed back up to Valkyrie's room. "Now where do we start?" said Skulduggery.

Valkyrie whined. "History, I guess."

Skulduggery pulled up another chair to Valkyrie's desk and sat down.

"Can't we sit on the bed?" asked Valkyrie.

"I'd prefer to stay here. Come on, it's not that bad once you get started."

"Fine."

The afternoon passed in a blur of facts and diagrams. Skulduggery was the most energetic teacher she had ever had; he waved his hands around and paced and demonstrated things. He jumped out of the window to show gravity, but then ruined it by displacing the air and hovering for a while. He tried to explain history by using magical history as a parody. He was really remarkable.

"You know you're a remarkable teacher, Skulduggery?"

"I've been told."

"But seriously, when did you learn to do this? Or where you just born supremely talented?"

He looked at her for a while, his head tilted to one side. He then turned to the window, where the sun was just beginning to set. "I used to coach my daughter in magic," he finally said. "I learnt a lot of things from being a father, I suppose."

"Oh."

"Do you want dinner?" he said.

"Sorry?" she'd been lost in Skulduggery's past, trying to imagine him as a father.

"Dinner. Do you want some?" he asked.

"Oh yeah, thanks."

"I never said I was cooking."

"Oh. Then no." He laughed.

***

Skulduggery was waiting in Valkyrie's bedroom. She should be back from school any minute now. He was just beginning to rummage through her stuff; a habit he had developed when he got bored, when Valkyrie burst into the room. She stopped. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"I was not rummaging through your stuff, if that's what you thought."

"Riiiiight."

"Did you get your results back?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes," she said slowly, unpacking her school bag.

"How did they go?"

"Well, here's my history paper, for an example." She handed him a small booklet.

* * *

**HISTORY EXAMINATION  
NAME: **_Stephanie Edgely_**  
FORM: **_9K_

**WHO WAS THE WAR THAT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN 1914-1918?**_**  
**__The War against Mevolent_

**WHO WERE THE MAIN CONTENDERS?  
**_The good sorcerers (elementals and adepts), who were led by Skulduggery Pleasant went up against Mevolent and his army._

**WHO WON THE WAR?  
**_Thankfully, Skulduggery and his army won, despite Skulduggery technically being dead. Otherwise, we would probably live in a world ruled by the Faceless Ones, which would really suck, as they want to kill all humans._

* * *

It went on.

"You actually handed this in?" he asked incredulously. "Valkyrie, you could've betrayed and revealed the entire magical world! What were you thinking? Why, I should-"

"Relax," she said. "Of course I didn't hand that in; I just wanted to freak you out." She flopped onto her bed. "It's called a joke," she said, when she saw Skulduggery was standing completely still. "I got over 90% in everything. Everyone was quite surprised."

Skulduggery sighed in a relief. "It wasn't a funny joke. My jokes are funny, ones like this just aren't."

"Uh huh. I know you're laughing on the inside."

"Okay, if that's what you choose to believe..."

"Oh shut up." She smiled up at him. "But thank you," she said.

"Your welcome."

"Do you think you can tutor me next year?

"I don't think I have anything planned."

"Coolio." She then sighed. "I'm going to have a shower. Will you pick me up tomorrow?"

"Yes." He tuned to jump out the window, then turned around again, to watch Valkyrie leave the room. _She does look like her..._ he thought as he jumped.

* * *

sorry, the last line was inspired by ThreeBooksInTheFire, i just think its such a sweet idea! i hope its made you feel better :D


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